10 Women Who Inspired Andy Warhol

While the term "muse" might have lost a little of its sparkle in the years between Andy Warhol’s most prolific period as an artist and eerily permanent fixture on New York’s glamour circuit, the American pop-art master sure knew how to pick ‘em. Far from being empty cyphers, the cast of women he surrounded himself with (professionally, socially, aesthetically) were a captivating mix of types; establishment heiresses and transgressive stars of the underground arts scene, wealthy power players in media and fashion and penniless cool girls, to say nothing of the small army of pristine, almost Hitchcockian beauties he brought together with more fascinating faces that challenged his era’s idea of what beauty could be.

As the world rushes to New York to visit a new blockbuster retrospective of his work at the Whitney, it seems fitting to spend a moment reflecting on the women of Warhol, and the magic they sprinkled across Manhattan in the '60s, '70s and '80s.

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Edie Sedgwick

Famously 1965’s "Girl of the Year", Sedgwick was rich, beautiful and profoundly troubled. For Warhol it was love at first sight (artistically speaking) and the series of films they made together rank among his most seen. After they fell out, she went on to live at the Chelsea Hotel and get tangled up with Bob Dylan, before marrying a man she met on a psychiatric ward. In 1971, she died two years shy of her 30th birthday, but the transcendental glory of her moment as the world’s coolest woman endures.

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Cornelia Guest

These days, the society legend is known as a keen vegan and occasional spokesperson for La Prairie, but back in the '80s Cornelia Guest was IT. The goddaughter of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, she was dubbed "Debutante of the Decade" after she exploded into Manhattan society in 1981. Always a fan of the flashbulbs, Warhol – a family friend of her polo playing father and socialite mother – was often to be found glued to her side.

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Candy Darling

The transsexual icon was born for muse status, doing the honours not only for Warhol of course, but for the Velvet Underground. She burned brightly through the '60s, starring in Flesh and Women in Revolt at the Factory, and died aged just 29 of lymphoma. "Unfortunately before my death I had no desire left for life,” she said at the end of her short life. “I am just so bored by everything. You might say bored to death.”

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Donyale Luna

The first black model to ever grace the cover of British Vogue, Luna was a '60s sensation who made her name in fashion by sheer force of wits and beauty. Hailing from Michigan, she was polar opposite to some of Warhol’s society girls and blazed through several of his movies, including Donyale Luna, a 33 minute micro-opus in which she plays Snow White. Alas, she shared a similarly tragic fate to many Warhol Superstars, and died of an accidental heroin overdose in 1979, survived by her photographer husband and their 18-month-old daughter.

David Bailey

Isabelle Collin Dufresne

Isabelle Collin Dufresne, a respected artist in her own right, was introduced by her former lover Salvador Dali to Warhol in 1963, and became one of his "Superstars" under her stage name Ultra Violet. In the '80s, she wrote a juicy memoir of their years together, Famous for 15 Minutes: My Years with Andy Warhol, which documented her many love affairs (Rudolph Nureyev and Milos Forman for starters) but surprisingly restrained drug use. “If I had lived like all those young people,” she observed. “I would be dead today."

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Bianca Jagger

The pair may have been époque defining party pals, but things fell apart rather after Warhol’s death when, in 1989, Jagger successfully sued the publishers of The Andy Warhol Diaries for libel in the UK. Despite all those nights on the town together, she took issue with Warhol’s occasional characterisation of her as unintelligent. Imagine!

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Grace Jones

The pair were famously each other’s dates to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1986 wedding to Maria Shriver, arriving so late that they burst through the church’s creaking doors as the happy couple were uttering their vows. Jackie Kennedy, Shriver’s aunt, was not impressed – not even by the spray-on, forest green Alaia dress Jones had changed into in the ladies’ room at the airport on the way.

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Jane Holzer

Better known, of course, as "Baby Jane Holzer", the nickname Women’s Wear Daily gave her at 22, she was the Florida tycoon’s daughter who became a Factory star. As famous for the fullness of her bouffant as for her fashion connections, in the '60s she was photographed by David Bailey for Vogue and once prompted Diana Vreeland to swoon: “Jane Holzer is the most contemporary girl I know.” Now a respected film producer and major collector of Basquiat and Richard Prince, what did she make of her years working with Warhol? “It beats the shit out of shopping at Bloomingdale’s every day,” she said.

David Bailey, Conde Nast Archive

Diane Von Furstenberg

“He was a voyeur. He never spoke much. He would have lost his mind on social media,” quipped von Furstenberg in The Observer in 2014.

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Viva

Born Janet Susan Mary Hoffman, Viva was perhaps Warhol’s most beloved Superstar, certainly towards the end of the '60s. Like a number of his muses she’d had a strict Roman Catholic upbringing, which didn’t hold her back from starring in some of his more fruity output, from Tub Girls to The Nude Restaurant. "[She] had a face that was so striking you had the choice of whether to call her beautiful or ugly,” Warhol said of her magic. “I happened to love the way she looked.”

Andy Warhol – From A to B and Back Again is at the Whitney Museum of American Art until March 31 2019